Antibodies Counter Diabetes

Quick strikes against wayward immune cells

Transplant surgeon Takashi Maki once put people with diabetes under the knife. Then and now, some diabetic patients get a new pancreas, full of insulin-producing cells, to replace similar cells that their bodies have destroyed. While pancreas transplantation is still used in some cases of type 1 diabetes, it's neither widely available nor consistently successful, says Maki.

The Harvard Medical School researcher no longer operates on diabetic patients, but he has high expectations for a drug that he previously gave them after transplants. That drug, made up of immune-suppressing antibodies, discourages rejection

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